When you study a book, focus your whole mind on the subject in hand. Do not allow the mind to see any external object or hear any sound. Collect all the dissipated rays of the mind. Develop the power of attention. Attention, as I have said somewhere in the beginning, plays no inconspicuous part in concentration. Concentration is, in fact, the narrowing of the field of attention. It is one of the signs of trained will. It is found in men of strong personality.
Practise attention on unpleasant tasks from which you have been shrinking on account of its unpleasantness. Throw interest upon uninteresting objects and ideas. Hold them on before your mind. Interest will slowly manifest. Many mental weaknesses will vanish. The mind will become stronger and stronger. The force wherewith anything strikes the mind is generally in proportion to the degree of attention bestowed upon it. Moreover, the great art of memory is attention and inattentive people have bad memories.
There is great concentration, when you play cards or chess, but the mind is not filled with pure and divine thoughts. The mental contents are of an undesirable nature. You can hardly experience the Divine Thrill, ecstasy and elevation of mind, when it is filled with impure thoughts. Every object has its own mental associations. You will have to fill up the mind with sublime spiritual thoughts. Then only the mind will be expurgated of all worldly thoughts. The picture of Lord Jesus or Buddha or Krishna is associated with sublime, soulstirring ideas; chess and cards are associated with ideas of gambling, cheating and so forth.
The invocation of shadow gives the objects seen as well as unseen. Undoubtedly a man becomes pure by its very sight. The shadow can also answer any question you may desire to ask. The Yogic practitioner who is able to see his own reflection in the sky will be able to know whether his undertakings will be crowned with success or not. Those Yogins who have realised the benefits of concentration fully have declared: “In a clear sunlit sky behold with a steady gaze your own reflection; whenever this is seen for a single second in the sky, you behold God at once in the sky.” He who daily sees his shadow in the sky will acquire longevity. He will never meet with accidental death. When the shadow is seen fully reflected, then the Yogic practitioner gets victory and success. He conquers Prana and goes everywhere. The practice is simple enough. One realise the fruits in a short time. Some have realised the fruits in one or two weeks. When the sun rises, stand in such a way that your body casts a shadow upon the ground and you are able to see it without difficulty. Then steadily fix your gaze on the neck of the shadow for sometime and then look up into the sky. If you see a full grey shadow in the sky, it is very auspicious. The shadow will answer any question for you. If you do not get the shadow, continue the practice till you get it. You can practice this in the moonlight also.
Some people feel intense pain and agony when they suffer from some disease in some part of the body. The reason is not far to seek. They always think of the disease and do not know how to take the mind away from the affected part of the body by the practice of abstraction and fixing the mind on some other object. Some people feel less pain than others. Such people know how to divert the mind from the seat of disease. Whenever there is pain in the body, practice concentration on your tutelary deity or study some philosophical books. The pain will vanish.
Concentration is purely a mental process (for full particulars vide my book “Sure Ways for success in Life and God-realisation”). It needs an inward turning of the mind. It is not a muscular exercise. There should be no undue strain on the brain. You should not fight and wrestle with the mind violently.
Sit in a comfortable pose. Relax all the muscles of the body. There should neither be muscular nor emotional nor nervous nor mental strain. Keep a tight hold on the mental faculties. Still the mind. Silence the bubbling thoughts. Calm the emotions. Put a brake on the thought-process. Do not pay any attention to the intruding thoughts. Give the suggestion to the mind: “I do not care whether they are there or not.” In other words, be indifferent. The intruding thoughts will quit the mental factory soon. They will not cause any trouble. This is the secret of mental discipline. Improvement in concentration will be visible only little by little. Do not be discouraged on any account. Be regular in your practice. Stop not the practice even for a single day. Lord Jesus says: “Empty thyself; I will fill thee.” This process of emptying all thoughts should be attempted after you have attained some power of concentration. Keep yourself in a positive state always. When you wish to concentrate on a piece of work to be done with care, you can use all your will and imagination also. Imagination helps even concentration.
If you find it difficult to concentrate on the heart, on the tip of the nose, on the space between the eyebrows, or on the crown of the head, you can select any external object for the purpose. You can, for instance, concentrate on the blue sky, the light of the sun, the all-pervading air, ether, sun, moon, stars. If you experience any headache or pain in the skull or any part of the body due to the strain of concentration on a particular place or object, shift the centre of concentration or change the object.
A Raja-Yogi concentrates on the space between the eyebrows (Ajna Chakra or Trikuti) which is the seat of the mind in the waking state. You can easily control the mind, if you concentrate on this region. Light is seen during concentration on this region very quickly. He who wants to meditate on the macrocosm (Virat) and he who wants to help the world should select this region for concentration. A Bhakta or devotee should select the heart, the seat of emotion and feeling. He who concentrates on the heart gets immense happiness. He who wants to get something for himself should concentrate on the heart.
A scientist concentrates his mind and invents many things. Through concentration he opens the layers of the gross mind and penetrates deeply into higher regions of the mind and gets deeper knowledge. He concentrates all his energies into one focus and throws them upon the materials he is analysing and so finds out their secrets. When there is faith, the mind can be easily concentrated on the subject to be understood; and then the understanding quickly follows. As mind evolves, you come into conscious relation with the mental currents, with the minds of others near and distant, living and dead. He who has learnt to manipulate the mind will get the whole nature under his control.
Too much physical exertion, too much talking, too much eating, too much mixing with ladies and undesirable persons, too much walking will cause distraction of mind. Those who practice concentration must abandon these things. Whatever work you do, do it with perfect concentration. Never leave the work without finishing it completely.
Celibacy, Pranayama, reduction of wants and activities, renunciation of objects, solitude, silence, discipline of the senses, annihilation of lust and greed, control of anger, non-mixing with undesirable persons, giving up of newspaper-reading-habit and visiting cinemas—all these pave a long way in increasing the power of concentration.
Even if the mind runs out during concentration, do not bother. Let it run. Slowly bring it to your object of concentration. In the beginning the mind may run 50 times, two years of practice will reduce the number to 20; another three years of continued and persistent practice will reduce the number to nil. The mind then will be completely fixed in the Divine consciousness. Then it will not run out even if you try to bring it out. This is the practical experience of those who have gained complete mastery over their minds.
Arjuna had wonderful concentration. He learnt the science of archery from Dronacharya. A dead bird was tied to a post in such a way that its reflection was cast in a basin of water right beneath on the ground. Arjuna saw the reflection of the bird in the basin of water and aimed successfully in hitting at the right eye of the actual bird tied to the post above.
Napoleon also had remarkable power of concentration. It is said that he had full control over his thoughts. He could draw one thought from a pigeon hole of his brain, dwell on that single thought as long as he liked and then shove that thought back into that pigeon-hole. He had a peculiar brain with peculiar pigeon-holes!
